Alterblog

Mircea Cartarescu - Solenoid

Alone, alone, the bitterness of being alone! So often like this, in lonely places in the forest, he would come upon something —bird, flower, tree — beautiful beyond all words, if there had been a soul with whom to share it. Beauty is meaningless until it is shared.

“The Communist Party cannot tolerate a fair fight because in a fair fight they would lose”

"All right," Travis continued, "say we accidentally kill one mouse here. That means all the future families of this one particular mouse are destroyed, right?"

"Right"

"And all the families of the families of the families of that one mouse! With a stamp of your foot, you annihilate first one, then a dozen, then a thousand, a million, a billion possible mice!"

"So they're dead," said Eckels. "So what?"

"So what?" Travis snorted quietly. "Well, what about the foxes that'll need those mice to survive? For want of ten mice, a fox dies. For want of ten foxes a lion starves. For want of a lion, all manner of insects, vultures, infinite billions of life forms are thrown into chaos and destruction. Eventually it all boils down to this: fifty­nine million years later, a caveman, one of a dozen on the entire world, goes hunting wild boar or saber­toothed tiger for food. But you, friend, have stepped on all the tigers in that region. By stepping on one single mouse. So the caveman starves. And the caveman, please note, is not just any expendable man, no! He is an entire future nation. From his loins would have sprung ten sons. From their loins one hundred sons, and thus onward to a civilization. Destroy this one man, and you destroy a race, a people, an entire history of life. It is comparable to slaying some of Adam's grandchildren. The stomp of your foot, on one mouse, could start an earthquake, the effects of which could shake our earth and destinies down through Time, to their very foundations. With the death of that one caveman, a billion others yet unborn are throttled in the womb. Perhaps Rome never rises on its seven hills. Perhaps Europe is forever a dark forest, and only Asia waxes healthy and teeming. Step on a mouse and you crush the Pyramids. … Never step off!"

Excerpt From

“Life was all a matter of contrasts, Professor Hobbes used to reiterate. You can’t enjoy anything without a contrast to it.”

William Boyd - Brazzaville Beach

The thing life is

The scene opens with the wise and beloved old rabbi, lying on his deathbed. He is attended by a dozen or so of his students and disciples, all of whom are dutifully lined up in order of seniority, somberly awaiting the rabbi’s last words. Finally, the moment arrives. The rabbi opens his eyes, leans over to his side, and grants to his first and best student his parting declaration: “Life is…a river.” Quickly, the first student passes the word along to the next student in line. “The rabbi says life is a river.” And then it is passed to the next: “The rabbi says life is a river.” And so it goes on down the line, until the message reaches the youngest of the entourage. He receives the news, ponders it for a moment, then naively responds, “But what does the rabbi mean, life is a river?” And so back up the line his question comes, one by one, until it reaches the most senior student, who feels obliged to pose the question, on behalf of the others. “Rabbi,” he asks, his voice nervous with apprehension, “what do you mean, ‘Life is a river’?” The rabbi closes his eyes to think.

He opens them. He looks over at his beloved student, shrugs his shoulders, raises his palms, and admits:

“OK, so it’s not a river!”

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” – Frederick Douglass

When a child asks an endless string of “Why?” questions, the smartest reply is “I don’t know, what do you think?”

Kevin Kelly

From the stoics

From the Indian monk, Tilopa:

Don’t recall. Don’t imagine. Don’t think. Don’t examine. Don’t control. Rest.

From a Scientist